1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for optimizing a physical data communications topology between a plurality of computing nodes.
2. Description Of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computing systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas in which substantial technical advances have been achieved is in connecting multiple computing nodes together for data communications. The nodes are typically connected to one another through one or more physical links configured according to a particular physical data communications topology. Each physical link is a physical data communication channel between two nodes and is often implemented using traces on a printed circuit boards, cables, and switches in a network switch. The data communications topology used to connect the various nodes is usually balanced. That is, each pair of nodes directly connected through links is typically connected using approximately the same number of links. The drawback to such topologies, however, is that often the network traffic between one pair of nodes is heavier than the network traffic between the other pairs of nodes. As such, some links in the topology are congested with network traffic, while other links may be underutilized, thereby increasing overall network latency and reducing network performance.